Archive

Sparrowvsrevolution writes “Wired has published an excerpt of the new WikiLeaks-related book This Machine Kills Secrets, which delves into the launch of the WikiLeaks spinoff OpenLeaks at the Chaos Communication Camp in Berlin last year. The detailed account of the site’s debut, with German ex-WikiLeaker Daniel Domscheit-Berg at the helm, reveals that even before the dispute between WikiLeaks and OpenLeaks led to the controversial destruction of the decryption keys for 3,000 of WikiLeaks’ encrypted leaks taken by Domscheit-Berg, OpenLeaks was already facing significant problems: Rumors that the group had been infiltrated by the German government, a lack of code open for public auditing and even a failure to get the site online in time for the penetration test it had invited the CCC hackers to perform. The book passage gives a peek into the infighting, bad luck, disorganization and personality problems that has left the world without a real sequel to WikiLeaks despite the dozens of leak-focused sites that have launched in the last two years.”

An anonymous reader writes “Learning to write code has become something of a trendy thing to do. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said he intends to learn code this year. Estonia has recently announced a scheme with the aim of getting every 6-year-old in the Baltic state to learn programming skills. The demand has spawned a number of start-ups offering coding lessons. General Assembly, which teaches off-line courses, has recently opened up in London and is recruiting ahead of a launch in Berlin. On-line education site Codecademy landed $10 million to expand from its home base in New York. Zach Simms, the 22-year-old co-founder, said in an earlier interview with The Wall Street Journal that not everyone has to learn to code, but everybody ‘needs to learn the notions of algorithms, realizing what you can use code for.’ But do they?”

First the spec, and now the hardware: MrSeb writes “After five years of trying to convince us that 3D TVs are the future, it seems TV makers are finally ready to move on — to 4K UHDTV. At the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin, Sony, Toshiba, and LG are all showing off 84-inch 4K (3840×2160) TVs. These aren’t just vaporware, either: LG’s TV is on sale now in Korea (and later this month in the US), Sony’s is due later this year, and Toshiba will follow in the new year. Be warned, though: all three will cost more than $20,000 when they go on sale in the US — oh, and there’s still no 4K Blu-ray spec, and no such thing as 4K broadcast TV. In other display-related news, Panasonic is showing off a humongous 145-inch 8K (7680×4320) plasma TV, and some cute 20-inch 4K displays — but unfortunately neither are likely to find their way to your living room or office in the near future.”

An anonymous reader writes “Scientists have long believed that the ability to learn and appreciate music was stored in a different part of the brain than other types of memories. Now, researchers in Berlin think that they have concluded that theory. Dr. Christoph J. Ploner, Carson Finke, and Nazli Esfahani at the Department of Neurology at the Virchow campus in Berlin, Germany have examined a man who has lost all of his memories but has retained his ability to remember and learn songs.”

Diggester tips this quote from NBC News: “Two men unlucky enough to get both HIV and cancer have been seemingly cleared of the virus, raising hope that science may yet find a way to cure the infection that causes AIDS, 30 years into the epidemic. The researchers are cautious in declaring the two men cured, but more than two years after receiving bone marrow transplants, HIV can’t be detected anywhere in their bodies. These two new cases are reminiscent of the so-called ‘Berlin patient,’ the only person known to have been cured of infection from the human immunodeficiency virus.”

jfruh writes “Sam Muirhead, a New Zealand filmmaker living Berlin, will, on the 1st of August, begin an experiment in living an open source life for a year. But this is going way beyond just trading in his Mac for a Linux machine and Final Cut Pro for Novacut. He’s also going to live in a house based on an open source design, and he notes that trying to develop and use some form of open source toilet paper will be an “interesting and possibly painful process.”"

Yoko Ono wants to document all the smiling faces in the world, and earlier this month she released an iPhone app to just that. So far she’s collected 2,700 jovial expressions, but it’s unclear how the app is different from all the smiling pictures which currently exist on Facebook and Twitter, except that Miss Ono is now indirectly involved.

Originally based off a 1967 film project idea, the app #smilesfilm is simply that: of smiling faces. “My ultimate goal in film-making is to make a film which includes a smiling face snap of every single human being in the world,” Ono said on Twitter.

#smilesfilm users upload photos of themselves through Twitter or Instagram, and can interact with other geotagged app users by checking out other smiling faces in the “dream” section. According to the description, the app also comes with inspirational quotes and sounds from Ono herself:

Our smiles change moods and opinions as they radiate positive energy out into the world, creating joy, healing and peace, changing the Universe for the better.

In an interview with Reuters, Ono admitted it’s not always easy to smile, but she did it for her “health” after John Lennon’s death.

#smilesfilm follows decades of similar projects encouraging smiling by Ono: In 2009, smiling faces from photo booths at art exhibits in Tokyo, Berlin and New Delhi were collected on Flickr.

rDouglass writes “MuseScore, the open source music notation editor, and pianist Kimiko Ishizaka have released a new recording and digital edition of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. The works are released under the Creative Commons Zero license to promote the broadest possible free use of the works. The score underwent two rounds of public peer review, drawing on processes normally applied to open source software. Furthermore, the demands of Bach’s notational style drove significant advancements in the MuseScore open source project. The recording was made on a Bösendorfer 290 Imperial piano in the Teldex Studio of Berlin. Anne-Marie Sylvestre, a Canadian record producer, was inspired by the project and volunteered her time to edit and produce the recording. The project was funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign that was featured on Slashdot in March 2011.”

An anonymous reader writes “After its recent success in the Berlin elections, the German Pirate Party scores 7.4% of votes for the state pariament of Saarland, earning them 4 seats out of 51. While the campaign didn’t center around copyright issues and/or ACTA (the party’s stance is well-known), it centered around open government, access to education, and participative governing models, effectively ridding the party of its ‘one issue’ notion.”

An anonymous reader writes “After its recent success in the Berlin elections, the German Pirate Party scores 7.4% of votes for the state parliament of Saarland, earning them 4 seats out of 51. While the campaign didn’t center around copyright issues and/or ACTA (the party’s stance is well-known), it centered around open government, access to education, and participative governing models, effectively ridding the party of its ‘one issue’ notion.”